OUT AFRICA MAGAZINE Out Magazine ISSUU 33 | Page 13

foot. At the time Marlon Brando was
having an affair with one of the male
waiters at the restaurant, Jacques Viale.
Vadim and Marquand overheard
Brando muttering in English and
introduced themselves. They knew
nothing of Brando’s recent success
on Broadway, taking him for an out
of work actor bumming around Paris.
When Brando mentioned that he was
suffering in an uncomfortable fleabag of
a hotel, the Hotel d’Alsace, Vadim and
Marquand decided to invite the young
Brando to come live with them, and all
three became intimately acquainted, if
you get my drift.
In fact the normally heterosexual
Marquand soon became besotted with
Brando. Christian Marquand became best
known to English-speaking audiences in
Lord Jim (1965) and Apocalypse Now
(1979).
Marlon introduced his new friends to his
waiter friend, Jacques Viale, who joined
their circle. Viale later said that his time
with Brando and his friends was the
greatest moment of his life. “It was all
downhill after Brando.”
This was also before Vadim captivated
three of the world’s most voluptuous
women: in 1952 he married Brigitte
Bardot, in 1961 he began an affair with
Catherine Deneuve and in 1965 he
married Jane Fonda. He later wrote a
book about them: Bardot • Deneuve •
Fonda: My Life with the Three Most
Beautiful Women in the World (1986).
But I digress. When Roger and Christian
moved to larger quarters in Paris, they
took in another actor, Daniel Gélin, to
help with expenses. Even though Brando
and Christian were immersed in a deeply
sexual and emotional relationship,
Brando set his sights on Gélin, as well.
He was an easy, willing target. Late in
life Brando said, “I have truly loved only
three men in my life: Wally Cox, Christian
Marquand and Daniel Gélin. All others
were merely ships passing in the night.”
Marlon later named his son Christian in
honour Marquand of one of his first loves.
Interestingly, at the Hotel d’Alsace where
Brando was holed up, he was staying in
the very room in which Oscar Wilde had
died penniless and disgraced in 1900.
(numbered Suite 16 today). This building
now houses one of the most elegant Left
Bank hotels and restaurants in Paris,
namely L’Hotel at 13, rue des Beaux-Arts.
Before long Brando became known
in inner circles as Hollywood’s rogue
bisexual, and what might have been
construed as youthful exploration of the
various facets of one’s sexuality, was
anything but.
Marlon was a tough guy with a stunningly
beautiful face. As a young teenager, he
got kicked out of high school for riding a
motorcycle through the schools hallways.
But this tough “rebel without a cause”
image belied a protective, tender person,
illustrated when he once came to the
rescue of a skinny kid being taunted
and beaten by schoolyard thugs. He
intervened and helped him up, threw his
arm around him and announced to the
grateful boy, “I’m your new best friend.”
Thus began a bizarre, intimate
relationship with fellow actor Wally
Cox that would last a lifetime. After Cox
died in 1973, Brando kept the ashes for
safekeeping, because he wanted his own
ashes to be commingled with Wally’s
when the time came. Sure enough, in
2004, Brando’s family honoured his
request. The Associated Press reported,
“The ashes of Brando’s late friend Wally
Cox, who died in 1973, were also poured
onto the desert landscape of Death Valley
as part of the ceremony of scattering
Brando’s ashes.” Brando not only kept
his friend’s ashes for more than 30 years,
but, when lonely, would sometimes dine
with the urn, holding conversations in
which he would perfectly imitate Cox’s
distinctive voice.
Unlike many bisexuals (Cary Grant for
example), who denied their homosexual
activity all their lives, Marlon Brando
brazenly admitted it. In a 1976 interview,
Brando said, “Homosexuality is now so
much in fashion it no longer makes news.
Like a large number of men, I, too, have
had homosexual experiences, and I am
not ashamed. I have never paid much
att ention to what people think about me.”
Of course rumour has it that not only was
Brando bisexual but he was possessed
of a voracious libido. There were plenty
of homosexual experiences to report –
among his partners were Burt Lancaster,
Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Leonard
Bernstein, Noël Coward, Clifford Odetts,
Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift (on a
dare, they once ran naked down Wall
Street together), James Dean and Rock
Hudson. However, striving for a balanced
diet, his conquests also included Marilyn
Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly,
Rita Hayworth, Shelley Winters, Ava
Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt, Hedy
Lamarr, Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid
Bergman, Edith Piaf and Doris Duke (the
world’s richest woman at the time).
By the age of 23 Brando had achieved
stardom as Stanley Kowalski in
Tennessee Williams’s stage play, A
Streetcar Named Desire (1947). It was
during this time that he met another
great American actor ... Paul Newman.
Paul Newman was a movie star so
impossibly attractive that all the most
famous faces of Hollywood, both male
and female, wanted to bed him. He
complied enthusiastically.
In author Darwin Porter interviewed
Brando in 2004, and in his 2009
biography Paul Newman: The Man
Behind the Baby Blues, he relates this
quote from Marlon: “He never fooled
me. Paul Newman had just as many on-
location affairs as the rest of us, and he
was just as bisexual as I was. But, where I
was always getting caught with my pants
down, he managed to do it in the dark.”.
As a youngster, Newman idolised Marlon
Brando and plotted to meet him. Having
been discharged from the navy and with
plenty of gay sexual experience under
his belt he went to see Brando in A
Street Car Named Desire on Broadway.
Newman was floored, totally swept away
by Brando’s performance. He contrived
to meet Brando and an hour after the
curtain, Paul nervously confronted his
prey with a well-rehearsed line: “Mr.
Brando, you’re the greatest thing since
God granted men the right to cum.”
It worked like a charm. Next thing you
know, Brando was saying, “Now get your
fucking cute little ass over here and plop
it down on my [motor]-cycle. I’m going to
take you on a tour of the midnight sights
of Manhattan.”
According to Carlo Fiore, Brando’s
longtime companion, Brando later
boasted, “I fucked the kid in all known
positions. He even inspired me to some
new ones. The kid even resembles me. It
was as if I was fucking my younger self,
even though he’s just a few years younger
than me. Of course, by the time he got on
that train back to Ohio, he’d fallen madly
in love with me.”
Back at school, Newman wrote Brando
a fan letter every week. None was ever
answered. Even so, once Newman
returned to college, he changed his major
to Drama, and the next big change in
his life came when he won a spot at Lee
Strasberg’s Actors Studio in NYC, where
he became caught up in an affair with
fellow student James Dean.
But Brando continued to haunt his
life. They looked so much alike that
throughout the 1950s people came up to
Paul mistaking him for Marlon and asked
for his autograph. Paul obliged. Paul
started an affair with actress Kim Stanley,
who herself had earlier had a sexual
relationship with Brando. According to
one of Kim’s many other lovers, the
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